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Let Love Bloom: Weeding out Bitterness
As soon as the temperature starts to rise at the beginning of March, I start planning my garden for the year. Spring is a time of preparation for me: clearing out the remnants of last year’s garden, pulling weeds, and starting my seeds so that I can have a beautiful crop of veggies in the summer. For the last two years, I have started to do some gardening with my little girl. I love teaching her how to plant the seeds, and seeing her excitement over every little earthworm or roly-poly she finds. I’ve also found my patience tested when she rubs her muddy hands all over my sliding glass door and dumps the whole seed packet on the ground, but spending that time with her is worth a little mess.
Becoming a parent has given me an understanding of God’s heart that I doubt I ever would have had otherwise. To create someone who looks like you, love and protect them, teach them how to live rightly, and forgive them when they disobey–it makes me marvel at the thought that the Creator of the universe wanted to share even the intricacies of this relationship with us.
If I can love this tiny human so much, with every fiber of my being, how much more does our Father, with his infinite, boundless love, care for me? My love as a mother is far from perfect; when my daughter throws things or hurts someone or lies to me, I can be so impatient. But God doesn’t lash out in anger. He doesn’t get overstimulated and irritated and yell. He stays, He waits, and he corrects us gently, even when we intentionally do things to hurt Him.
Love Requires Forgiveness–Even When It Hurts.
When I think of God’s patience and forgiveness, I remember how hard it was raising our foster daughter. She came to us at 11 years old after experiencing deep trauma in her early life. Because of what she had been through, trust didn’t come easily—especially with authority figures, and particularly with me.
As she moved into her teenage years, the pain she carried often came out in anger and conflict. Our home became a place where love, boundaries, and healing were all colliding at once. Many times I felt like the target of her hurt and confusion. I had hoped simply to be a mother to her, but instead I often felt rejected and overwhelmed.
Over time the weight of it all left me exhausted and wounded. When she eventually moved to live with another family member, I realized how closed off my heart had become. I felt like I had nothing left to give.
That summer, in the quiet, I sensed God speaking gently to my heart: How do you think I feel, child? This is only a glimpse of the ways my children have turned away from me. Yet I still love them. I still gave my life for them.
In that moment, God reminded me that forgiveness is not something we manufacture ourselves—it’s something He helps us choose. With His help, I began the slow work of releasing my bitterness and forgiving her.
Remembering His Sacrifice
During this season of Lent, we should not only remember Christ’s sacrifice for us, but His loving forgiveness. As we remember how hard it has been for us to forgive others, we can consider Christ, in the garden, wrestling with the hurt and fear He felt, and choosing to pray for us instead. He chose to experience even more pain at our hands because no pain could overwhelm the love He had for us.
Lent gives us an opportunity to make space in our hearts so we can fully experience and appreciate God’s sacrificial love. But bitterness not only takes up space, it keeps us from knowing and understanding God’s heart by experiencing some of what He did. Forgiving those who have sinned against us allows us to understand even just a portion of the joy He feels when He washes our sins away.
So ask God today, “Who do I need to forgive?” Let go of that hurt, and submit your anger and resentment to Him. It may take time and continuous surrender, but He will faithfully pull out those bitter roots until they no longer grow back. And then finally, His love can bloom in you.
